Monday, 28 January 2013

One of the sharpest pains we feel
on behalf of a character is when they are betrayed. In order for the reader to
feel this pain, they need to know who the betrayer is. The closer the relationship
between the character and the betrayer, the greater their pain and the greater our
sympathy.

A story that focuses on finding
out who the traitor is—a mystery—usually reveals their identity
near the end of the story, at which point the reader and the main character
discover the truth together.

In terms of creating sympathy you can use to draw the reader into the story, that's too late to be of much use.

When it comes to sympathy, the
sooner you reveal the betrayal and who's responsible, the better.

It can also be tempting to just
show the effects of betrayal—the guy who won’t trust anyone, the girl who won’t
love again—and only reveal the cause later, but again, that’s veering towards
mystery.

You will generate a lot more sympathy if the readers knows up
front that the character has been betrayed and by whom (assuming the reason is
a valid one). The betrayal doesn’t have to be the central focus of the story, it can
just be something that informs a character's development.

If you have a situation where the
reader knows someone is being duplicitous, but the character doesn’t, then seeing the
character being duped by someone he trusts can markedly increase sympathy for them. But
it can also work if both reader and character know from the start. A child
abandoned by its mother is a betrayal that can still be seen having an effect
many years later without much need for explanation.

The kind of betrayal can be
wide-ranging, from a double-agent in a group of spies to a cheating lover to a
kid who tells on another. However, because this kind of situation is most
effective when it’s someone close to your MC, what you end up with is a lot of
stories where it’s the same person doing the backstabbing. The wife, the best
friend, the boss... And because it’s obvious, for example, that a man would be
close to his wife, the relationship is just sketched in on the page. They’re
married, you know what married people are like, I don’t have to paint you a
picture do I?

And so you end up with a lot of clichéd
representations of what a perfect marriage is like.

In order to maximise the pain of
betrayal, it helps to emphasise the positive sides of the relationship. Show
how well a couple get on, how cool a best friend is, how important the boss is.
But what often happens when a writer knows a scene has a specific purpose (e.g.
to show a couple are close and loving) is that they’re so busy making sure they
get the message across, the scene ends up being direct and simplistic.They forget
to make the scene interesting and entertaining in its own right.

Betrayal is about being lied to
or cheated on or swindled in some way. These sorts of moments have all the
ingredients for a great, memorable scene. The important thing isn’t that a
character is betrayed, it’s how they’re betrayed. How can you use what happens
to show the kind of people we’re dealing with? How can you make it interesting
and unexpected?

Because even though a man coming
home early and finding his wife in bed with the gardener gives us the
information, it does so in a flat and pedestrian manner.

It’s also very easy to settle for
clichéd reasons for the betrayal. She doesn’t love him anymore, he wanted all
the money for himself, the company had to downsize...

Betrayal is emotionally affecting, but don't let the hefty weight of the concept take away from making the scenes where it occurs, where it's discovered, where blame is handed out, obvious and on-the-nose. You still have to make it inventive and engaging for the reader.

The bond between betrayer and
betrayee is key to creating maximum sympathy for the MC. This isn’t always
possible. The betrayer might be a corporation, or they might be dead. But getting
across a sense of what they meant to the character before the betrayal will
intensify sympathy. Seeing it for ourselves is the best way, but flashbacks,
exposition or narrative summary can all do the job, too.

If the MC is/was especially kind
or generous towards the person who turns on him, that will also intensify
sympathy. If the reader doesn’t know this is the betrayer, they’ll be all the
more hurt when they do find out. If they already know, then the greater the
outrage at seeing the MC being taken advantage of.

The act of betrayal itself can
come in many forms, but the character you want to come across as sympathetic
needs to be as blameless as possible. If he was planning to double-cross the
other bank robbers, and they double-crossed him first, that isn’t going to
generate much sympathy.

Betrayal hurts the most when it
isn’t provoked, when the victim’s actions deserve a medal not a knife in the
back, and when the betrayer is someone the victim cares about. Give the reader all
three and they’ll be on the character’s side no matter what.

Throughout this series on Sympathetic Characters, the more unfairly a character is
treated the more sympathetic the reader feels towards him. This is one of
the most effective and versatile ways to increase sympathy in any situation, as we shall see in
the next post—Sympathetic Characters Part 6: Unfairness.

***

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25
comments:

Anonymous
said...

"The more unfairly a character is treated the more sympathetic the reader feels towards him." Well, I suppose it also depends on why the character is being treated unfairly. It might be justified. Great post, mooderino! -AJ

I really liked the line, “The important thing isn’t that a character is betrayed, it’s how they’re betrayed.” This is an excellent point. Nearly everything is considered cliché, so a writer needs to be able to take something like betrayal and use it in a way to make the reader feel something. The same holds true for other things like friendship, redemption, the fall from grace, etc. Too many think that all they have to do is a have a character experience betrayal, and that’s it. But you’re right, it’s not about the betrayal, it’s about how it happens.

This really hits close to home because the manuscript I have on submission right now has a betrayal in it. I tend to think (of course I am biased) that I did the betrayal well and was not at all cliche about it. But who knows. Maybe I really suck at it.

In reading this series I've been thinking of when I've been the most sympathetic to a character... and the quickest. For that I'd have to vote for American Gods - I thought the plot of that book got a bit away from me, but I loved it because I was so committed to seeing this guy have something good happen to him. So, that would probably be a good case study in a sympathetic character... I mention it because betrayal took place there too.